


and she put her love down soft and sweet

by philthestone



Series: from eden [1]
Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, bjr found dead and irrelevant in miami, outlander was like found family trope but everyone has the same last name, questionably accurate depictions of policework, thats not the plot of this fic but it SHOULD be, this is a brooklyn nine nine au in case that wasnt very clear, which i personally love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: “Well, I’m glad you’ve Jamie for a friend, Mister Fergus," Claire tells the small ten-year-old sitting at her desk. "He’s a very thoughtful one.”“Och, but that’s a grand sign in a man,” says one of the perps in holding. “Has he a wife, do ye know?”“No,” says Geillis, “he’s a taken man, Mrs. MacNab. My condolences.”"Fakemarried," says Claire. "We'refakemarried. Forwork."Geillis makes a truly infuriating "Mmmm" noise and goes back to tapping purple rocks against each other outside of Captain MacKenzie's office.
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp & Geillis Duncan, Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser, Jamie Fraser & Jenny Fraser
Series: from eden [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711879
Comments: 43
Kudos: 161





	and she put her love down soft and sweet

**Author's Note:**

> dedicating this fic to @elsaclack, bc emily has been my number one supporter throughout this whole arduous process even tho she really doesnt go here.
> 
> title is from hozier's work song as it SHOULD be and i hope u enjoy reading as much as i did writing. 
> 
> also, claire & jamie invented marriage i think

Jamie’s in the middle of throwing a balled-up case report across the room into the bin when Dougal announces that there’s a mass murderer on the loose.

It’s quite abrupt. Claire sips her coffee and thinks resignedly that everything the Captain does is a little abrupt.

“A mass murderer,” asks Rupert slowly, over the rim of the bin, which he had been holding for the ever-paramount passtime of target practice. The case report has missed, and bounced off of his wide forehead. It’s currently sitting a little sadly on the floor, by a dust bunny the janitor must have left behind last night. “Or just a murderer?” 

Dougal glowers. “A man who’s murdered many a person. Gang leader. Goes by some pseudonym -- San Ger- _mayn_ \-- foriegn bastard. Werks in the South side, jest past the public parks. He’ll be at the pub wi’ some hoor tonight, fer a business meeting, and I’ll be needin’ two of ye eedjits to go undercover.”

Claire cannot decide whether she should wince at _hoor_ or _forgein bastard_. This does not go unnoticed by Jamie, who has swivelled around in the office chair and is listening to Dougal with raised eyebrows and his chin resting against his forearms. Murtagh, who has a bad head cold and has wrapped up half of his blotchy face in Jamie’s favorite tartan blanket scarf to ward off the sniffles, gives Claire an oddly knowing look from behind his desktop. Angus says,

“Two’ve us? Me an’ Rupert could go.”

Jamie goes back to throwing balled-up paper at Rupert and the bin.

“No,” says Dougal, darkly, like he’s annoyed at what he’s about to say next. “Needs t’be a man and woman. The bastards he’s meeting are a marrit couple.”

From her perch at the cluttered assistant desk outside of Dougal’s office, Geillis pauses in tapping at her phone and says, helpfully,

“Claire and Jamie are still marrit from the last undercover case, no?”

Claire freezes in taking the next sip of her drink. Rupert snorts; Murtagh sneezes. Jamie’s latest throw sails across the bullpen and lands in Angus’s cold half-finished coffee with a sad _splosh_. 

“What?” asks Angus. “Ye’mean they never _un_ marrit?”

Claire is refusing to look, but she has the distinct feeling that Jamie’s ears are slowly turning as red as his hair. 

“You’re acting like it was a real marriage,” she says practically, gazing with steadiness at their disgruntled commanding officer. “When, pray tell, are we meeting the _foreign bastard_ , Captain?”

Mostly, Claire is content to just not think about it, which is easy approximately sixty-five percent of the time. The other thirty-five percent involves a deep and unwavering impulse to kill Geillis, and she means that with the utmost possible love.

“Weel, you’ll be wanting this for the memories, I suppose,” Captain MacKenzie’s eccentric personal assistant had said, the first time they’d gone through with it. Claire had stared down at the signed piece of cardstock paper and felt an odd sort of foreboding. 

_This is to certify that the undersigned N. Gowan did on the 15th of May in the year of our Lord 2016 join in lawful wedlock Elizabeth B. Lambert of Oxfordshire, England and Alexander M. Malcom of Edinburgh, Scotland with their mutual consent --_

“Chin up hen.” Geillis had a sly glint to her unnaturally large eyes, an unfortunately familiar thing even then. She had already gone back to curling her long, wispy hair, a feat she was accomplishing with three yards of extension cord hanging across the bullpen and plugged into the wall socket by Murtagh’s desk. Murtagh kept pausing in his Sergeant’s paperwork to stare incredulously down at it, like he couldn’t quite believe it was real; Claire felt sympathetic. “Ye could’ve done a lot worse, aye?”

Which had completely _not_ been the point. 

Catching bad guys, Claire reminded herself periodically, had been the point. Bringing criminals to justice had been the point. Dedication to her _professional career_ , really, had been the _point_.

It was a very righteous point, and she clung to it.

It was easy to cling to, anyway, when Jamie, blue eyes alight with a familiar manic intensity, bustled her into the briefing room not thirty minutes later, handed her half of his sandwich, and begged her to weigh in on the elaborate -- if a little chaotic -- case board that he’d already gotten started on.

**iii.**

It’s not to say, she has to allow, that the whole thing doesn’t have its perks.

“I dinnae ken witches could be marrit,” Jamie is very seriously explaining to the distressed farmer and his hysterical wife who’ve a truly laudable conviction in the supernatural. Above their heads, the rain patters down mercilessly onto the shed roof. They’re in a bloody _shed_. 

_Christ_ , thinks Claire. 

“Look,” Jamie points, as the trembling civilians in front of him peer suspiciously down at the item they’re presented with. “Here -- that’s the certificate.”

It’s definitely more battered now than when Geillis handed it to her all those months ago. Despite everything, Claire has to take a moment to wonder why on earth Jamie conveniently has their fake marriage certificate folded up and stuffed into his back pocket. She cranes her neck a little to get a better view of it all.

“Before God, and everythin’,” says the husband, a little tremulous.

“Before God!” repeats his wife. She looks rather like she might collapse with relief. 

“Aye,” confirms Jamie, gravely.

Claire, who is tied to a chair behind him, cold, damp, and very irritable, sighs through her nose and represses the urge to loudly repeat that witches don’t _exist_. This is what they get, she supposes, for following a missing person case to the farthest reaches of rural Scotland. Nothing if not belligerent, Frank used to call her. She frowns, which does not help her current predicament in the least. A second time, she tries to crane her neck so that she might address the husband and wife directly around her professional police partner’s annoyingly broad-shouldered back. 

“Please,” says Claire, “I really am sorry for scaring you.”

This appears to be counterproductive; both husband and wife startle. The wife looks back at the marriage certificate with renewed anxiety.

“Look,” tries Jamie again, in his best Detective Fraser Voice. Claire thinks that this, definitely, is why he’s the one they get to talk jumpers down from the ledge, and not her. “What ye wish to do from now ‘tis yer own business, but I cannae let my own wife be left tied to that wee chair wi’ God as my witness. I swore an oath to protect this woman before the Almighty, ye ken. You cannae tell me ye know better ‘n He who’s a witch and who is not.”

Claire resists yet another urge to sigh very loudly through her nose. Instead, she says, in her most overwrought voice,

“Oh, _please_. All I want is to go home with my darling husband. We only came out here to enjoy the scenery -- it’s the anniversary of our honeymoon!”

The couple dithers. Jamie offers them a winning smile, which Claire must admit is more than disarming even to the well-prepared. 

“Weel …” says the husband.

Ten minutes later, Jamie’s rubbing feeling back into her wrists over the front seat of the battered truck Dougal lends them for plain clothes cases. It’s more a tractor than a bloody truck, Claire’s always thought, but that fits right in with the miserable farmland.

“I found another lead for the missing girl case,” Claire tells him. That’s the whole reason she’s out here, anyhow. “She had a male cousin in the area. Or at least -- he owned property here.”

Jamie pauses in the rubbing -- it’s really helping quite a lot -- to frown.

“Christ, Sassenach,” he says.

“I didn’t _mean_ for them to think I’m a witch.” 

He grins, which means she’d read his reply correctly and it was only sixty percent dedicated to the missing girl.

“Ye do come across as witchy, sometimes, ye ken.” She doesn’t swat him. She _doesn’t_. She says,

“Geillis is rubbing off on me.”

“Did she forwarn ye of this venture, then, in her astrology reading this morning?”

Claire extracts her hands from his, gently, and doesn’t think about how glad she is that he’s here, or how he knows exactly what her line of reasoning might have been to end up in the backcountry. In doing so, she catches a glimpse of her wedding ring -- her _real_ one, whatever that means now -- where she still wears it, only on her right hand.

Something about seeing it just then makes her feel odd at the pit of her stomach. Not pathetic, like she usually does, just -- odd. Maybe it’s to do with Jamie; he’s seeing it too, after all. And he’s still here, rubbing her wrists.

“Hmmm,” she says. “Unclear. There was a mysterious romantic stranger, though, which I suppose _could_ have been the lone rat I saw in the corner.” Jamie’s already giggling, which of course makes her start up, in spite of everything. 

“Perhaps it meant yer _darling_ husband.”

“Oh, shut up,” she gasps, in between giggles. “Why did you even have that bloody certificate on you, anyway?”

His laughter fades rather abruptly, but his expression -- usually so adept at keeping a poker face -- turns unnaturally, obviously gentle. His ears have gone their telltale pink, just a little; she ignores this.

“I -- well, I dinnae ken -- that is, ye never know when something’ll be useful, aye?”

“Aye,” repeats Claire, softly. 

He smiles again, a crooked quirk of his mouth. “Ah -- best get this evidence back to Dougal, no?”

They drive back to Edinburgh, in companionable silence.

**iv.**

Jamie became a detective because his older sister was mugged once in her first year of university, coming home from class one Edinburgh afternoon in broad daylight.

Claire went to medical school.

It was years ago, now, but she still did it -- committed and everything -- and, technically, has the degree. She’s not sure what compelled her to change careers. She can’t claim some innate drive to fulfilling inner craving for utility; medicine helps people rather more directly than police work. Nor the thrill -- surgery would have been bloody harrowing, at times. 

Sometimes, when she and Jamie are in the middle of a case and all the little pieces snap into place at once, she thinks that her impulsive career change may have been some kind of fate. Written in the stars. Don’t people buy into that sort of nonsense on the telly?

“Nonsense,” parrots Geillis in a sing-song voice, when Claire brings it up, “ _suuure_.”

This is, as usual, not helpful. 

“Hmmmm.”

“Hurry it up, ye arse. Ye cannae take all day te decide.”

“Ah’m _thinkin’_. It’s an important question.”

“Important question,” Rupert mutters, rolling his eyes. “Isno’ findin’ the cure for cancer, ye --”

“Okay -- invisibility ferst, but if I couldnae have that, I’d take flight.”

“Boo,” says Geillis. She’s perched on the counter. Angus and Rupert are sat at the breakroom table in deep discussion over their shared box of greasy pizza. “Ye wee pervert.”

“Och, it isnae fer that!”

“Yeah, right,” says Rupert. “Alright, next question. If ye had a million pounds --”

“Fly to the moon,” says Geillis immediately.

“Build a castle in the middle of a loch, away from ye lot,” grumbles Murtagh, into his instant noodles.

“I would, _actually_ , find a cure for cancer,” says Claire. 

“The question wasnae fer any of _you_ ,” says Angus, annoyed. “But ach -- Jamie, what’ll ye do wi’ it, laddie, if ye had it?”

Jamie, who is lying on his back on the sagging break room couch, playing chess against himself on his laptop, hums and looks up at the ceiling for a long moment.

“Ye ken,” he says, “I’ve no clue. Give it t’Jenny, maybe.”

Angus makes a face at this. “Aw, ‘tis no’ fun if yer selfless about it. Yer sister hasnae any use fer that many pounds. _I’d_ use it to run from the Godfersaken funeral home lady,” he decides, tapping his nose. “A million pounds, could get me all sorts of places, aye? Could disappear.”

“Ye should get fake marrit for work, as Claire did.”

Claire splutters, mid-iced-coffee-sip.

“Och, come off it woman.”

“All I’m saying is that she was real marrit last year, and now she’s no’,” says Geillis wisely, from where she’s playing _Nightsister Magick_ on her phone. The little _ding_ noises whenever she fits a block into its slot and collects the row’s gemstones are giving their lunch break ambiance.

Rupert starts chuckling. “Ye ken, she might be gettin’ at somethin’, actually.”

“Aye,” says Angus, eyes widening in slowly-dawning inspiration, as though this might actually be a feasible solution to his woes. He starts contemplating one pizza slice in front of him with great thoughtfulness.

“All of ye can shut yer gabs,” says Murtagh, finally deeming the conversation degenerate enough to insert his proverbial oar. “An’ leave Detective Beauchamp to her bloody lunch.”

“Och, Sarge --”

“I didn’t divorce my husband because I got fake-married to Jamie,” Claire says, annoyed. “I divorced him because I caught him _cheating_.”

This would have been a far more dramatic declaration had the whole room not already known it quite well. As it is, Geillis makes a loud noise of disgust and crosses herself, Rupert and Angus swear loudly and as one in Gaelic, and Murtagh’s face darkens over the growing sogginess of his instant noodles. These are all, somehow, reactions almost comforting in their familiarity. 

Claire looks over at Jamie. He seems to be biting down on his own tongue, and his knee is vibrating with restrained tension so obviously that the poor chess game on his laptop has started shaking, but he is -- as usual -- very kindly refraining from disparaging comment. She watches him meet her eye, almost covertly, over his game, and give her a small, gentle smile. 

Claire feels something loosen at the back of her throat, like an undone knot. 

“Ungrateful bastard,” Murtagh is in the process of declaring. “But ye shouldnae brought the whole thing up, Geillis.”

“Sorry, Sarge.” 

She does not sound particularly sorry. Claire can’t really find it within herself to feel too sore. 

“It’s alright,” she says, toneless. “What’s the next question, Rupert?”

“Weel,” says Rupert, looking back at the list on his phone. “If ye could go back t’any point in time ...”

Claire starts slightly at the sudden warmth on her shoulder, but muscle memory has her relaxing as she identifies the hand as Jamie’s even before she’s looked over at him.

“Ye’re alright, Claire?” he asks, soft enough that Geillis and Murtagh can graciously pretend not to hear. Rupert and Angus’s rekindled debate fades to the background.

“Oh -- yes, I’m fine,” says Claire. His laptop’s been tucked under his arm, against the worn softness of his favorite plaid shirt. “Truly,” she says, at his gently-quirked eyebrow. And then adds, teasing: “Who won?” 

Jamie grins down at her from beneath his curly fringe, eyes sparkling.

“The superior player o’course, Sassenach.” Then he winks, which means that he with great confidence only blinks both eyes at her rather owlishly. 

Claire is still giggling after he’s left the room. She turns back to her now-watery iced coffee to see Murtagh watching her, an odd expression on his usually stony face.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing,” he says, and goes to dump his remaining noodles.

**v.**

On Monday Claire finds a small child sitting at her desk, slowly and deliberately making his way through a very large Snickers bar as though his life depends upon it.

“Hello,” says Claire.

“Bonjour,” says the child.

“It’s bring yer child to work day,” Geillis explains, waving her twig of burning incense around the desk in front of Dougal’s office. Claire doesn’t bother to remind her that this is a scent-free workplace. 

“Geillis,” says Claire. “Is this _your_ child?”

“Och, no,” says Rupert, from across the bullpen. “‘Tis Fraser’s.”

Which has Claire gaping in unequivocal consternation at the curly-haired ten-year-old in front of her for roughly sixty seconds before Jamie’s voice sounds behind her.

“Fergus, laddie, the _other_ desk is what I told ye.” He stops short, and looks at her, something like an apology lurking around his chin. “Mornin’ Claire. Sorry about the desk. Wee smout -- yer gettin’ crumbs _everywhere_.”

“Suzette said I could have ze _chocolat_ if I wished,” protests the boy -- _Fergus_ \-- but neither he nor Jamie appear genuinely distressed, and he offers no complaint when Jamie hauls him easily by the armpits up and over the desk, into his own seat. Claire looks down at the bit of chocolate dotting her desk chair with vague interest. She sits down. Looks back up at Jamie.

“Suzette?” she prompts.

“Oh, aye -- Fergus, say hello.”

“‘Ello, Detective _Beauchamp_ ,” recites Fergus, cheerfully and politely, sticking one chocolatey hand out over the desk for Claire to shake. Claire does. He pronounces her last name the French way, which would bother her with anyone else, but with Fergus only makes her want to smile with some much-repressed doting maternal instinct.

“Fergus is my downstairs neighbor’s nephew,” Jamie explains. “From Paris -- well, ye ken that well enough. Told Suzette I’d do her a favour, bring him in, seein’ as it’s take yer bairn to work day, and he’s no -- well. Suzette’s the only one he’s got.”

“Oh,” says Claire, and then again -- “ _oh_. Well -- Fergus, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You as well,” says Fergus, who is very well-spoken for a little boy with no parents and chocolate smears on his cheeks. Claire likes him immediately. “Monsieur Fraser has told me _all_ about you.”

“Oh?” says Claire. 

“Jamie, ye’ve got a witness in holdin’ to attend to,” says Murtagh loudly. He seems to have materialized from the briefing room for the sole purpose of making this announcement, and vanishes back whence he came just as quickly. Jamie rolls his eyes, gives Fergus’s curly head a quick ruffle, and says,

“Claire, can ye --”

“Of course.” 

Geillis is now tapping two purple rocks together over the Captain’s old casefile folders. She smirks at Claire from over his shoulder. Claire clears her throat.

“Is Fergus your real name?” she asks the little boy curiously.

“Oh, no,” he says solemnly. “It’s Claudel. But I have decided to be a Scottish man, like Monsieur Fraser.”

“Dinnae ken ye want that, actually,” says Geillis.

“I understand,” says Claire, ignoring Geillis. “How long have you known Jamie, darling?”

Fergus grins through a mouthful of Snickers. “Since last month! He lets me come to his flat and play video games when Suzette works ze night shift.”

Claire, who is quite familiar with the threadbare corduroy couch in Jamie’s living room that his sister declares an atrocity unto God, and who was there when the second Wii remote was purchased off Kijiji, can only nod quite seriously at this. She wonders if Fergus has any opinions about the couch; she can’t help but think he’s rather more stylish in his pint-sized outfit than all the other men in their precinct put together. She says,

“Well, I’m glad you’ve Jamie for a friend, Mister Fergus. He’s a very thoughtful one.”

“Och, but that’s a grand sign in a man,” says one of the perps in holding, who has paused in the inimitable practice of loudly snapping her gum to make her next inquiry. “Has he a wife, do ye know?”

“No,” says Geillis, “he’s a taken man, Mrs. MacNab. My condolences.”

Claire thinks that it’s nine a.m. in the bloody morning and she still hasn’t had her coffee.

“Ignore them,” Claire tells Fergus, who looks rather too canny for her own peace of mind. On impulse, she moves to offer him a Kleenex before he can wipe his mouth on the green sleeve of his shirt.

“I also think Monsieur is a good friend,” says Fergus, untroubled. “Madame Detective Beauchamp, are you also not any good at Mario Kart?” 

Unbidden, she sees this small, dimpled, brown-cheeked boy at home on that miserable couch, absolutely sweeping the floor with his unwitting host armed only with a small cartoon mushroom as his weapon of choice. She has to puff out her cheeks to keep her snort in check. 

“Oh -- not very, Fergus,” she says.

Fergus heaves a great sigh of resignation, though he does not seem _too_ distressed.

“I thought so. But it is so much more fun zan _chess_.”

Here Claire laughs in earnest, cheeks rounding with it; Fergus beams, delighted that he has found a new friend, and says, 

“You are just like Monsieur. When he talks about you he also has ze glow around him like zis!” 

Claire blinks twice, and suddenly wonders how unethical it would be to suggest they go look at pictures of dead bodies.

She’s saved from having to do this when Geillis materializes at her side and drops a very hefty stack of paperwork at her elbow.

“Special delivery for Mrs. Fraser,” says her traitorous friend.

“That’s Mrs. Malcom, to you,” calls out Rupert, not looking up from his case notes.

“Och, to be in yer position, lass,” waxes Mrs. MacNab the perp. 

Fergus, who has abandoned his Snickers bar and started to poke curiously around Jamie’s eternally tidy desk space, looks up to stare wide-eyed at Claire with a mixture of confusion and the blossoming delight of someone who’s been told Christmas is coming early. 

Claire wishes she lived far away, like on Mars. Or perhaps Brighton.

“ _Really_?” 

She always has to deal with this nonsense on her own; Jamie’s still in bloody holding with the witness, isn’t he.

“We’re _fake_ married,” Claire says, as patiently as humanly possible, for what seems like the billionth time. “We’re not married for _real_.”

**vi.**

“Ye need t’get marrit for real,” announces Dougal.

The briefing room has possibly never been this silent in all the years they have occupied their sad precinct’s space. Murtagh, who was a moment before shuffling through his briefing notes on Dougal’s other side, drops them haphazardly on the floor and swears the most loud and colourful swear in his vocabulary. Claire is quite proud of him. She watches with numb fascination as he scowls and stoops, fumbling, to pick them up. 

“Are ye _mad_ , man?” Murtagh asks, from under the podium.

“No’ more’n any of ye lot,” growls Dougal. “Black Jack Randall’s resurfaced.” 

“Well, fuck,” says Claire. 

This seems to jar Jamie out of his gap-jawed shock; he sputters, for just a moment, before asking, “What, are ye _sure_?” in a tone that is both strangled and -- impossibly -- excited.

Dougal grunts, as though offended this is even a question. 

“Interpol has sent word -- they’ve an operation runnin’. Have given us entry to it, seein’ as we’ve hist’ry with the devil.”

Which is just bloody _brilliant_ , isn’t it. 

“Christ,” says Rupert. Angus sniffs, loudly. There’s a sad _game over_ noise as Geillis dies on the latest level of _Nightsister Magick_ , watching the proceedings with rapt and undivided attention. 

Claire swallows.

“What does that have to do with Jamie and I getting married?” she asks. A very reasonable question, if she might say so herself. Dougal must think so too, because, for perhaps the first time in all the years she’s known him, the granite-like lines of his face soften minutely. He actually looks sympathetic -- something like the gruff uncle he might’ve been in a different life, had he not dedicated his person to being a cantankerous captain in one of Edinburgh’s less manageable precincts.

“We’ve a chance -- a _chance_ \-- to bring Black Jack in once and for all. Interpol’s operation calls fer undercover work. A husband and wife hailin’ from Edinburgh, interested in his dust shipments, as a cover for finally locatin’ the bastard. I told ‘em, ‘tis only fair the case is given t’ye two. They werenae going to acquiesce, but that arse at the Commissioner’s office said he’d a likin’ fer Jamie, an’ put his oar in.”

“ _Sandrigham_?” says Claire, eyebrows climbing up to her hairline. “He actually has that sort of pull?”

“Aye,” growls Dougal. “Clod-heided ninny that he is. So ye’ve been given the case. But Randall kens yer faces. _And_ yer names. If it’s to be done, ye must contact his gang anonymously at first, and then it must be an authentic sell, even tae the underlings.”

Murtagh says, almost derisively,

“And they’re somehow meant t’convince the hellion they’re no’ detectives any longer?”

“No,” says Claire, realizing. “We’d be dirty. We’d still be police, but we’d be --”

“Aye,” says Dougal, the grimness of it oddly satisfied in tone. “But the intel he’s got -- we put our wee foot in a bit too late. Ye must be marrit.”

Even half-numb with the multiple sudden realizations, Claire feels her gut tingle with the burgeoning thrill of putting together a covert operation. Perhaps the sliver of excitement in Jamie’s voice wasn’t wholly impossible. They’ll need a stakeout location, and alibis, and a new cork board --

“ _Real_ marrit,” says Rupert, with dawning surprise. “With their real names an’ everything?”

“Aye.” There’s a drawn out moment of silence, before Dougal says, “there’s no’ else for it. If ye won’t do’t, then there’s more likely he’ll walk again. Now, I’ve had Ned Gowan in HR put t’gether yer certificate. We can have Miss Duncan here as witness --”

“Mother Mary,” says Geillis.

“-- an’ no’ much else t’make it official. ‘Tis the selling of it that’s left t’ye both -- ye cannae play games. No covert agreements when ‘tis just the two of ye. There’ll be livin’ arrangements -- ye must be _authentic_ , or it willnae be bought, and that’s all our skins on the line.”

“What,” says Angus, after another moment of collective and somewhat awkward silence. “Ye mean they must consummate it?”

“Which _century_ are ye from, Angus,” asks Geillis, rolling her eyes.

“Weel, I didnae think --”

“Angus, ye bloody coof --”

“I’ll no’ have sex with Claire for a _case_ ,” says Jamie, loudly. It’s the first thing he’s said since his _are ye sure_ , and Claire does not squeak out loud. She does _not_. She says,

“Yes, _thank you_ , Jamie.”

Everyone starts speaking over each other at once.

“No one _said_ ye must --”

“But au- _thentic_ , ye ken, what’ll that _mean_ \--”

“Cannae a marriage that hasnae been -- ye know --” 

“That _isnae_ the point --”

“-- be annulled by the Church?”

“SHUT IT!” thunders Dougal. 

Silence descends once more. “Now who’s the coof?” mutters Angus, under his breath. 

Rupert elbows him.

“This is _serious_.” Dougal’s eyebrows, quite expressive on normal days, have transcended to the realm beyond and have seemed to take command of the room. Claire tears her eyes away from them and looks at his angry red face. The top of his scalp has pinkened, terribly beautifully, if she’s honest -- “Beauchamp. _Fraser_. Are ye in or no’?”

Claire swallows a second time, her throat significantly more dry.

Claire says,

“You’re not giving us much of a choice, Captain.”

“No,” says Dougal, without shame. “I am not.”

“I’ll do it,” says Jamie, from beside her. It’s overloud to her ears, such that she starts just a little, her nails digging into the fabric of his jeans over his knee. Maybe a little too sharply -- his face spasms, just for a moment. Oh -- she didn’t realize she’d grabbed his leg under the table. “I mean -- I meant -- Claire must also agree, o’ course, but I -- I’m ready to.”

He’s flushed from before, and, oddly, avoiding her eye -- but she notices the set of his jaw, the way it always rests when he’s smothering some profound emotion. And the pinch of his brows under his fringe, the one that shows up when he’s giving himself over to what he believes is his bound duty.

Now that she’s properly looking at him, she feels the realness of it all settle in and stick under her skin. He’d pulled on an old jumper before they entered the briefing room that morning, and it must be from the lost and found because the sleeves are too long and covering his fingers, quite suddenly making him look as young as he is. 

Claire feels her throat thicken somewhat. She retracts her hand from his knee. 

It’ll be nice to finally catch their bloody arch nemesis, though.

Surely that’s what’s crossing Jamie’s mind as well.

Christ, thinks Claire. And she’d been wondering a moment before whether morning brief would pass by quickly, as she had that string of break-ins to deal with. She swallows, a third time.

“I’m game if you all are,” she says.

Jamie lets out a long and full-bodied exhale beside her, and then grins -- all teeth -- and Claire, despite herself, feels suddenly that everything, surely, will turn out alright.

**vii.**

It’s disturbingly easy, being real-married to Jamie. Claire does not think about this in contrast to any previous marriages she may or may not have had. She simply thinks about this, on its own, every so often. Mostly when half-awake in the mornings, fumbling through making each other coffee even though neither can remember how the other person likes it. 

“I read yer astrological chart this mornin’,” Geillis tells her after three days. “Yer due for some mind-blowin’ loving, hen.”

“Duly noted,” says Claire, pinning another piece to their slowly growing evidence board.

“Yer _living_ together,” Rupert realizes, bringing a perp in on Friday.

“For the case,” says Claire, blowing an irritable curl out of her face.

“An’ ye both fit in that tiny wee flat of his?” Angus asks, week two, genuinely curious.

Claire does not deign to comment on this; to her great frustration, _she_ is not the one sleeping on that awful corduroy couch.

Murtagh sits her down in the break room on a Thursday, large hands gripping her upper arms just hard enough that it pinches for a moment, and then sits across from her. He’s hunched a little bit, like he often is when he’s deep in thought, and something in his eyes keeps wavering between angry and gentle. Claire thinks vaguely that Jamie is still down in the evidence lockup, likely armpits deep in their old files. She can picture, quite vividly, the way he’ll start sneezing once enough dust gets caught in his curly mop of hair. 

Murtagh opens his mouth, several times, and then closes it just as many. 

“Is everything alright?” asks Claire.

His moustache twitches. He takes a deep breath, before saying, 

“Well, ye -- ye ken what yer doing, Claire. I’m sure.”

And then leaves with a last clasp of her shoulder and a nod, almost done as though to reassure himself. 

Claire thinks suddenly of the small vase they found yesterday halfway through following up with a witness, the one with the little blue flowers along the edge that she’d liked so much. Jamie had declared it fit to hold any _wee plants_ they did or did not plan on growing.

She’d forgotten about telling him her dreams of a herb garden in the middle of a very urban city. The vase is now sitting on the windowsill of his little flat, looking like it belongs there. 

Claire doesn’t move for another few minutes after Murtagh’s left, but sits, and contemplates the scratched linoleum.

**viii.**

On Saturday, Claire wakes up in dim lighting with corduroy creases lining her cheek. It takes a moment for the universe to align itself again -- there is the recently familiar stained wooden coffee table, and there the tartan blanket scarf -- and, there, on the wall in front of her, the faded photograph of Jamie and his sister and their parents, grinning and making faces at the camera. Willie’s in this one, holding a Jamie who can’t be more than five in a loose sort of headlock. So it must be -- quite old, Claire thinks.

Something twitches against her arm and the rest of her spacial awareness settles in. It seems that not only did she fall asleep on the couch in the middle of determinedly sloughing through their growing mountain of evidence, she fell asleep against Jamie’s very warm and very sturdy t-shirt covered shoulder.

She looks over, stifling a yawn; Jamie fell asleep, too.

His head has lolled over such that his cheek is smushed into the couch, as hers had been, and his barrel-like chest moves in a gentle, even rise and fall. With her eyes, Claire traces the sleepy softness to his brow and chin -- he’s not had time to shave, so it’s peppered with prickles of red and brown and gold -- and then up to his jaw, and the little mole under the sharpness of his cheekbone, and the cheek that is rosy from the warmth of the space heater they’ve plugged in for Claire’s benefit.

His mouth is hanging open just a little, but the corners have twitched up in a vague, dreamlike smile.

Claire exhales, and looks down at the disarray of the coffee table. There’s something unfamiliar about this. About where they’ve landed. They’ve spent interminable numbers of late nights together before; they’ve nodded off together before. But that was in the breakroom at the precinct, mostly. 

The apartment is so quiet it’s almost intimate.

She shifts -- her leg has started to go numb tucked under her -- and reaches out for her phone, which lights up blue with a notification a moment before she gets a handle on it. She wonders whether she can get away with yanking her leg out from under her bum entirely without waking her gently-snoring partner.

Claire purses her lips; Geillis has sent her yet another tasteless suggestion for a dating app profile. Oh -- also a recipe for alcoholic hot chocolate.

She’s not sure why she’s suddenly vibrating with an irritable energy that makes her annoyed at the tea stain on the coffee table, and the yellowness of the faint light spilling out the bedroom door, and the new links in her iMessages. She’d told good Mrs. Fitz at the welcome desk only last week that she was doing quite well, thank you, and had been disquieted to realize that she’d meant it. 

She blinks, and looks back at Jamie. There’s a stray curl sticking to his forehead. On impulse, she reaches up to untangle her own nest of hair, which immediately gets caught in the tarnished silver ring she wears now. It’s very different from the old ones they’d use, for the undercover work. Those were all burnished versions of cheap metal -- nickle, or something. She’s not sure what hole they dug this one out of, only that Jamie gets oddly evasive every time she brings it up. 

This only adds to the sudden-onset irritation; she may just have to chop all of her hair off, she decides.

Wait -- no. Fergus has suggestions for detangling. Or rather, Suzette has suggestions, and Fergus enjoys relaying them unsolicitedly to Claire while she helps him through his math homework on Wednesdays. He arrives with great enthusiasm, always. She had to tell him only yesterday that he ought to knock more when entering the apartment, please.

“Oh,” Fergus had said, nodding wisely. “Since you are real married now.”

“Real married,” repeated Claire, like a fool. 

“Yes?” Fergus had leaned in seriously, looking concerned. “Madame, do not ze real married couples -- do things with breasts?”

Jamie had been digging around the fridge for orange juice at that exact moment; he dropped the carton on his foot and avoided Claire’s eye for the next hour.

“Bloody _get_ it _together_ , Beauchamp,” Claire says out loud, now, and presses her fingers into her closed eyelids. She should move to the bed. They should move to the bed. No -- _she_ should move to the --

Jamie snuffles in his sleep, startling Claire out of her thoughts. She looks down again at the artificial blue light of her phone, and the hot chocolate recipe, and the little logo of the dating app Geillis declared “most definitely wizard”. She likes the yellow of the bedroom lamp more, she thinks; an odd thought to have. 

Up, down, goes Jamie’s chest. That stupid little smile is still there. Unbidden, Claire feels a swell of something in her chest, a phantom that starts at her diaphragm and migrates to her tonsils and settles there, making her feel unbearably fragile.

Fondness, her mind supplies. Perhaps that’s what it is.

She leans back against Jamie, and the couch. Her skin has the oversensitivity skin does sometimes, when one has just woken up, and it makes a small, gentle thrill run up her arm and clench in her heart; the ache gentles. Some of the irritation leaks out of her limbs. Claire wonders what her parents would think of her, here now, before she closes her eyes.

**ix.**

Jenny visits after the fourth week, wearing a familiar _Lallybroch Farms_ sweatshirt and carrying a tote bag full of produce that’s almost larger than herself.

The door of the flat opens directly to the living room, which is more or less one with the kitchen, and it is somewhere between these two spaces that they’ve currently set up shop, pouring over case notes. Claire has been alternating between putting sticky notes on all of Randall’s previously-sighted locations on a children’s Map of Europe poster and chewing on her thumbnail. She’s vaguely aware that the map must be here for Jamie’s niece and nephews to play with, and is contemplating the apple juice stain on the corner and also the slowly dawning realization that her underwear is going to be laundered with Jamie’s today when they do the growing load when Jenny enters. 

She announces her presence with a muffled _thump_ behind the peeling paint of the door and the rattling of car keys before marching inside, arms are full of tote. Jamie looks up from where he and Claire are inelegantly sprawled on the corduroy couch, a permanent marker stuck behind his ear, and makes a vague noise of distress.

“I was wonderin’ where my sweater’d gone, ye wee thief.”

Jenny ignores him with the deftness of many fruitful years of practice.

“I’ve brought ye fresh eggs,” she announces, bustling right into the flat and immediately setting about extracting said gift from her parcels. “The bairns collected ‘em -- hullo, Claire -- and there’ll be vegetables in here too, as the Lord can testify ye need someone ensurin’ yer continued survival.”

“I’ve sense enough to buy _vegetables_ , Jenny.”

“Who keeps crisps in the ice box?” Jenny wants to know. “Anyhow, ‘twas a whole venture, this mornin’. Alberta near pecked Ian’s eye out, as wee Jamie pulled her tail feathers. Ye ken the traffic comin’ into the city has gotten better since they fixed that metro line? Is this Claire’s kettle on the stove? I’ve been meanin’ t’find one of these, they’ve a right sturdy handle that ye cannae find in the auld Kenwood -- by the way, I’d give that mat in the doorway a good beatin’, ye ken, afore it starts tracking dirt into the livin’ room.” 

She pauses, so that she can properly shove the overlarge sleeves of the stolen hoodie up her forearms, and then gets right back to it. 

“That new vase by yer window, ‘tis bonny though,” continues her disembodied voice, from behind the kitchen counter.

“How’s Ian,” asks Jamie loudly, ignoring the slight against his poor doorway mat.

“Right as rain,” says his sister. She seems to be quite economically packing the many gifts squirreled away in her giant bag of farm products into the tiny fridge. Claire picks at a hole in the sleeve of her jumper and wonders if she should offer to help. “Chicken assault notwithstandin’. I’d’ve brought the wee ones t’visit aswell -- they’re dyin’ t’see ye -- only they’re not off school ‘til tomorrow. How’s the work, then? I ken ye told me Dougal gave ye a thrillin’ case. I’ve said before, I dinnae think yer definition of thrill an’ mine are one and th’same, and I shall no’ have ye traipsin’ about -- this trout is a day from goin’ off, Jem.”

“Work is fine, the case is -- fine --” Jamie looks aggrieved about the trout. “Is it really?”

“‘Tis,” says Jenny gravely, her head popping up from behind the refrigerator door to grace them with a dry raise of her dark eyebrows and a long-suffering purse of her lips. 

Jamie sighs. He says,

“Fergus must’ve left the crisps in there -- will ye come an’ _sit_ a moment, ye daft woman?”

“Sittin’ is no’ somethin’ I do anymore, James Alexander,” says Jenny, solemn as an oak. “My three children have robbed me of the ability. Did ye finally get th’Netflix account to work, by the way?”

“Och, no -- but I’m usin’ Murtagh’s.”

“As ye should be,” Jenny agrees. “These carrots havenae place to fit. Maggy wanted ye to have the biggest ones.”

“‘Tis why I love her,” Jamie says, turning finally to Claire, who has been sipping her coffee and observing the ongoing exchange with quiet amusement. “She holds her poor carrot-less uncle in her wee heart, always.”

Claire is struck with an abrupt vision of the tottering round-cheeked three-year-old trying with great determination to pull the Murrays’ famously large carrots out of the vegetable patch. She smothers her giggle behind one hand, not wanting to impose on the seamless ritual nattering between the siblings, but Jamie is grinning, and flopping back down against the couch. Almost as though he’s going to lean into her -- and she feels his fingers press against her other wrist, where it lays between their legs. It’s such a quick, easy motion that it catches at something in her throat, behind the giggles. She turns to look back to the kitchen only to find that Jenny’s practical features have softened, something she is currently trying to hide behind a lettuce. 

She’d forgotten, Claire thinks suddenly, how frequently Jamie sees his family. They’re a chaotic bunch, but fierce -- loyal. Tangled up in each other in some ways that Claire’s never quite been able to understand. She all at once finds herself wanting to -- wanting to _know_. To touch the tender belligerence with which Jamie loves his big sister, and she loves him back. 

Claire shakes herself out of this train of thought just as Jenny turns to wage war on the pantry. She’s in the middle of saying, “The only thing of use in here is a withered potato,” with the longest imaginable suffering in her tone when she suddenly freezes, and turns, and narrows her eyes at them.

Claire and Jamie blink back at her from the couch. 

There is a t-shirt of Claire’s hanging from the back of the lone kitchen chair, and her hairbrush by the couch cushions, and an assortment of used mugs, half of which don’t belong to Jamie, scattered about the living room. 

The flower-patterned tea kettle Jenny had so enviously commented upon is starting to make a faint whistling noise from its spot on the stove.

“What?” asks Jamie, in a truly terrible attempt at innocence.

Claire closes her eyes and asks Saints she doesn’t wholly believe in what she could have possibly done to deserve the fallout from the foolhardy selective memory of a twenty-four year old man.

“Jamie,” says Jenny, a very slow note of something that could be horror building in her tone. “Are ye and Claire ... _livin’_ together?”

“Oh,” says Jamie. “Right. We’ve been wed.”

Claire wonders if Jenny is going to collapse; her face goes a somewhat sickly milk-ish colour, before speedily turning blotchy red, and then she blinks at them, several times, in rapid succession, her mouth agape. She’s bobbed her hair again -- Claire thinks it’s quite becoming -- but there’s one lone and new strand of grey that’s currently poking out at the top, and it’s really contributing to the energy of the moment, if Claire might make such an observation.

“Ye _what_ ,” Jenny croaks.

“For _work_!” yelps Claire, very belatedly.

“For work!” repeats Jamie, as though only just remembering this himself.

“For _work_?” asks Jenny, faintly.

They nod, in rapid and vigorous unison. Claire is sure they must look a sight, two heads of tangled curls bouncing up and down with panicked vehemence. 

Jenny continues staring at them, clutching Maggy’s carrots to her chest as though they might ward off general stupidity. The apartment is so quiet that Claire can swear she hears the birds chirping outside the closed window. Then the kettle begins to scream.

Jenny says, “Fer _work_. Aye, that’s what it is,” in a distinctly suspicious voice, and goes to get the tea.

**x.**

Later, after she’s left, Jamie turns to Claire. He’s rubbing awkwardly behind his ear; Claire’s half-wondering what she wants to do with the fresh spearmint now stowed in their fridge, and then wondering when she started thinking of it as _their_ fridge. 

She takes the time to frown at him, though, and cross her arms over her chest. His thin lips are pulled back in an aggrieved expression, like she’s the poor trout in the ice box that’s a day off from going bad.

“Sassenach --” he starts.

“We’re going to have to wash our underwear together this week,” Claire blurts, as though that has any bearing on him _forgetting to tell Jenny_ they were _married_. “I realized that just this morning. I’ve run out of fresh ones.”

Jamie blinks at her for a moment, before saying, “Ye’ve kept ‘em goin’ this long? That cannae be a healthy amount of undergarments to own, Claire.”

Claire says,

“I may own as many undergarments as I damn well please, James Fraser.” 

There’s a long beat. 

“Aye,” he says finally, with a deeply contemplative nod. “I ken that’s socks, for me.” 

Claire bursts out laughing, because his eyes are twinkling, because it’s a weekend, because they’re stuck in this ridiculous case together but God help her she _likes_ spending time with Jamie, now and probably always. It’s a feeling she’s not had since Uncle Lamb -- before Scotland, before Frank, before medical school. 

Jamie joins in her laughter, and the sunlight streaming through the apartment window is yellow and light. They make an omelette for dinner.

**xi.**

They’re in a motel room, clad in what can only be described as pajamas, staring out a window for very professional and work-related reasons.

“Ye’ve gone very quiet,” says Jamie’s voice.

Claire hums and looks up to see him slipping easily into the chair beside her by the window. He blows on the tea in his mug and hands her the other one, which must have coffee in it -- the smell is heavenly.

Claire sips it.

“Oh, this is terrible.”

“Mmm,” says Jamie, sighing and leaning back such that the chair creaks. “One’ve my many talents.”

“It’s because you like tea more.”

“Not true. It’s because I like whiskey more.”

Claire reaches over and fiddles with the long-range camera they’ve set up. The zoom corrects itself; thus far they’re only seeing an empty curb and the listless drapes behind a sad looking window, but at least it’s all in working order.

“That’s a more than sad excuse. I also like whiskey more, and _my_ coffee doesn’t taste like gravel --”

“ _Gravel_ , Sassenach, that cannae be somethin’ ye’ve sampled --”

Claire shuffles closer and hands him the long end of her blanket by way of cutting him off. 

“I’m not cold, Claire.”

“You will be. This bloody stakeout room hasn’t any good heating.”

Jamie blows loudly and pointedly on his steaming mug.

“Well, you can’t say later that _I_ wasn’t generous with my blanket --”

“ _My_ blanket, ye mean.”

“Married people share things,” says Claire primly, sipping again at her coffee. It truly is terrible. She takes a large swallow anyway, and revels in it; they’re going to be stuck here for much of the rest of the night, watching that sad set of drapes. It’s not exactly a soothing activity, but it’s better than the meet up they’d had earlier, with one of Randall’s underlings. Week five, and they’re starting to make real contact. Claire’s not sure if she’s thrilled or overcome by a sudden and irrational impulse to grab her partner by the collar and run to the middle of the woods somewhere to live off the land.

They could plant their herb garden properly, she thinks.

“Ye think he knows it’s us?” asks Jamie into the quietude, as though reading her thoughts. He’s graciously letting the _married people_ comment be; Claire feels a thimbleful of nervous energy she didn’t realize she was carrying slip out from between her shoulder blades.

“There’s no reason why he should,” says Claire, “we’ve been more than careful.”

“Aye,” says Jamie, pensive, controlled. He’s still leaned back, playing at casualty, but Claire knows the tells of a poised spring. 

Claire says, as easy as breathing, “We can take him together.” 

The rest remains unspoken. Claire wonders if they started exclusively partnering together on cases because bad things always happened when they were separated. She tightens her hand around the coffee mug, reflexive, and pauses when the metal of her fake-real wedding ring digs into her finger, just below the bone. She looks down. It’s easy to trace it with her eyes, even in the dim half-light of their stakeout motel room. Outside the window the sun has completely gone down, but there’s a bit of moonlight reflecting in through the window. It catches on one of the little band’s ridges -- makes it glow.

“Is that why you agreed to do it?” she asks suddenly.

“What,” says Jamie, a little dumbly. He’s pulled out his phone and seems to be struggling through the third level of _Nightsister Magick,_ eyes flicking up every so often to check on the viewfinder.

“Marry me,” says Claire, in a voice that’s too loud for the cramped motel room. “Because you knew I’d take the case, even without you.”

She watches the lines of his throat bob as he swallows.

“Aye,” he says, finally, after a long quiet moment.

“I’m glad it was you,” says Claire. 

“I know, Claire.” He flicks a smile at her, a quick thing that gets warmer as it widens. An inhale, full bodied, and then he says again, “I know.”

She nods, turning back to the window. She takes another gulp of coffee. Something about the walls of the room make her feel as though they’re in a cardboard box, not quite real, suspended in space. Liable to tip over at any moment. She looks down again, at the wedding ring, and then over to her right hand, where her old one _still_ hasn’t been taken off. It’s gold, and shiny, and nothing at all like the one Murtagh handed her -- heavy and silver and textured -- that morning in the park two blocks away from the station. Geillis had been snapping away with her phone’s camera, claiming they needed to log this online as proof of its faked realness. Claire kept tugging awkwardly at the old-fashioned sleeves of her dress, floaty and sheer and covered in little embroidered flowers. They’d found it in a second hand shop, just the night before, and it was so different from her first wedding dress, she remembers thinking. Oddly more comfortable. Maybe that was because she’d had it to change into after the perp she and Angus had brought in that morning threw up on her pants. 

But the sun had started shining around noon, and the greenery of the park was a strangely grounding backdrop to the chaotic proceedings of the hour, and she remembers feeling distinctly as though the priest they’d dug up to make it official was someone Rupert owed money to in cards. 

She remembers that, after a certain point, Jamie had grabbed her hand and just … hadn’t let go. 

And Murtagh had come over, given her arm a squeeze, and handed her the box with the ring. 

She runs her ring finger along the edge of the mug’s ceramic, just to hear the faint scraping noise. 

“Do you think Dougal actually went out and bought us the rings?” Claire wonders aloud. It’s an absurd sort of thought, their Captain’s hulking scowling person marching around in a cramped jewelry shop. Or perhaps one of those brightly lit department stores. Likely there was some bullying of sales personnel involved.

“The -- yer ring?” asks Jamie. There’s a familiar sad _game over_ noise. “Ah, I dinnae ken how Geillis is so good at this.”

“Well, I suppose both of ours,” says Claire, raising her hand to the window to see better. They need a good entertaining conversation to pass the time, she decides. “But mine’s rather unique, don’t you think? It’s quite pretty.”

“He didnea pick yours,” says Jamie, so carefully light in tone that Claire goes just a little still. “I mean -- it’s, ah. Well. I asked him tae use it. I thought ye’d like it more than -- anythin’ Dougal’d pick.”

“ _You_ picked it out?” asks Claire, looking over at him. Jamie’s facing the viewfinder, keeping a near religious eye on their sidewalk and drapes, but his knee gives a small twitch and he looks up, over his shoulder, to meet her eye.

“No’ -- ah, not exactly. It was my Mam’s.”

Less than four words. 

“Oh,” says Claire, almost inaudible.

Jamie’s still looking at her, his bright blue eyes paled with a flickering sort of resignation that borders on carefully controlled but profound nervousness, acutely aware of what tenuous, delicate balance he’s just upset. Her fingers tremble slightly at the fragility of it all. Like a tiny little bird’s egg, she thinks. Breakable as the edges of their vase, so diligently holding bits of lavender clippings. 

A part of her feels like she’s floating.

“ _Claire_ \--” Jamie starts, voice thick with apology, but Claire interrupts him.

“I’ve been -- I was thinking of my Uncle Lamb,” she says. He blinks at her. The mug of tea he’d claimed would be keeping him warm is sitting neglected by his knee, likely properly tepid by now. “Before, when I was quiet. That’s what I was thinking about.”

“Oh -- aye?” asks Jamie. His voice is a little strangled, but he follows her lead.

He always seems to be doing that, in his careful, unarticulated way.

“You know, I never thought -- after my parents, when I was with Uncle Lamb, we were always moving about. And then I met Frank, and we came to Scotland, and I did medical school, and I’d thought. Well I’d thought that everything was going to make sense at _one_ point, hadn’t I? That there would be -- this feeling of home. The proper way. Anyway,” says Claire, picking at a stray thread on the blanket scarf, “I was just thinking about that. I really liked medical school.”

Jamie shifts beside her. It’s not quite that funny shrug thing he does when he’s uncomfortable -- there’s too much ease between them for that, Claire thinks. 

It’s a reckless thought, reckless in the way she usually ascribes to him. Reckless like the way she wants to reach out, and trace the sharp curve of his cheek with her fingers.

He’s not reckless right now, though. The care -- the control of him, beside her, it’s holding their little carboard box stakeout room together. It’s this that makes her look over, to face him. 

Jamie says, from the depths of his heart, “Ye’d’ve made a fine doctor, Claire.”

Claire swallows. 

“I know. But everything else would’ve been -- well.”

“Well,” Jamie agrees. 

“I’m glad it was you,” she blurts out, again. “ _Truly_ , Jamie.”

He’s so close, knee to knee, arm to arm. She’s suddenly overcome with a feeling like crying, with a bone-deep need to take his sweet face in her hands and just -- allow them to _be_. Her fingers slip over the frayed softness of tartan where she comes to grip the arms of her chair. 

He’s looking at her like every gentle, kind thing on earth has been wrapped up with her under the blanket scarf.

“I want …” whispers Jamie, shakily, like he can’t quite believe the words are coming. “That is -- I would ... verra much like to kiss ye, Claire. May I?”

“Yes,” says Claire, a sliver of those tears slipping into her voice. 

“Yes,” says Claire, choking on something that might be joy.

“ _Yes_ ,” says Claire, mouth smiling against his. 

The scarf slips to the floor.

**xii.**

There is a bust, and several arrests, and the sun starts shining brightly even though it is Scotland in March. Claire finds herself sitting on the unoccupied half of a hospital bed, reading aloud quietly from _Harry Potter_.

“I suppose ye won’t be needin’ this anymore then,” sighs Geillis, from above them, holding a certificate for annulment in her free hand. The other is holding a truly gigantic crocodile skin purse, which Claire cannot help but think would look terrible on anyone but Geillis.

Claire and Jamie look up at her from where they are sprawled on the hospital bed, leaning against each other. Fergus is nestled into Jamie’s other side, absorbed in the task of very deliberately decorating Jamie’s new cast with colourful illustrations of male genitalia. 

Claire says, “Not really, no.” 

Geillis raises both eyebrows and offers a _truly_ smug, “Mmmhmmm,” noise.

Claire can’t help it -- she grins. It’s very large and somewhat irreverent. She blames this on Jamie, because his smiles have always been infectious, and also because he has pressed his face into her neck to hide his own laughter and the scruff of his chin is tickling her in in truly delightful ways.

“Och, they’ll be right insufferable now,” says Rupert, from where he is sat in an adjoining chair, knitting.

“I think it’s romantic,” says Angus.

“Ye were all supposed tae be _quiet_ , so I could get some verra well-deserved shut-eye,” says Murtagh, folded into the other chair, cap pulled down over very determinedly shut eyes.

“Would you like me to continue reading, Murtagh,” asks Claire, quite reasonably, and feels her grin grow impossibly wider when he grumbles his assent -- Jamie is whispering something likely inappropriate to Fergus in accented French from behind Claire’s cloud of hair, and his uninjured hand has snuck around to her other side, fingers tangling against hers under the worn cover of the library book. Claire feels the old ache of fondness, but it’s softer now, more whole, settling. The sun shines yellow and bright through the open window, the like light from Jame’s bedroom lamp. Over the sound of Fergus giggling, Claire thinks that they might be able to transfer their plants from the little vase now, into a planter to place on the porch.

She smiles, and touches the ring covering her finger, and continues her reading, thinking of home.

**Author's Note:**

> i see an 18th century period drama i write a brooklyn nine nine au i guess. sincerely hope everyone is staying safe and supported in these trying times. love to u all <3
> 
> Update I arrive 84 years late to add a missing scene that makes the plot in this fic make marginally more sense


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